Granted, in my case, they were keenly aware they were talking to a journalist and one who offers opinions and observations for readers and voters to absorb. But even that shouldn't obscure the fact that neither man whose name will be on the June 5 recall election ballot is a demon.

What has become apparent during the past several months and will be amplified in the remaining days before the historic election is the degree of venom that pours from the mouths and pens of those who apparently consider their man 100 percent pure and the other guy equally contaminated. It's ugly, and it's incorrect.

Maybe that's why some myopic brains - one from each political side - paid for billboards in the area criticizing the opponent in suggestive language unfit to be reprinted here. Is the race on to see who can be more vulgar?

There is a lot on the line in this election for many people - jobs, finances, power - so their disagreement with the other candidate's actions and opinions should not be trivialized. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that a side effect of this battle is a condition that many people have contracted, that everything coming from one camp is gospel and all we are fed from the other side is blasphemy.

A liberal's definition of a conservative is anyone less liberal than himself, and the conservative tosses every person with fewer right-wing opinions than himself into the liberal basket.

It's a natural mindset, given the tension the last 15 months have produced in Wisconsin and the attention this recall is attracting throughout the country. But it is also foreboding.

The most important days of the recall season are not the 25 that will take us to June 5. They are the days, weeks and months after the election when we find out if there is any hope that the detachments of the past can be closed instead of being further fractured. Responsibility will rest with the victor, of course, but the opportunity will exist for his advocates to relinquish a winner's privilege to crow and instead look for ways to mend and mediate. Is it completely na´ve to believe it's possible?

It won't be an easy transition from this month of May when rancor will likely reach new levels, and the same claims and charges will be repeated ad nauseum. This is what the decisions by a governor and the protests of people have wrought.

But the June 5 election cannot be the end game if the state expects to revise its image. Rather than being the symbol of disunion, Wisconsin can become an example for a divided country on how to recover from political civil war.

What's left of the recall campaign is the little picture. What happens after that is the big picture.